The International Prize for Arabic Fiction—also known as the Arabic Booker—was announced yesterday as a sort of kick-off for this year’s Abu Dhabi International Book Fair.

This is the second time Jaber has been shortlisted for the prize, which, when you think about the fact that this is only the fifth iteration of the award, is pretty remarkable.

Here’s a bit about the book and Jaber himself:

After the 1860 Civil War in Mount Lebanon, a number of fighters from the religious Druze community are forced into exile, travelling by sea to the fortress of Belgrade on the boundary of the Ottoman Empire. In exchange for the freedom of a fellow fighter, they take with them a Christian man from Beirut called Hanna Yacoub; an unfortunate egg seller who happens to be sitting at the port. The Druze of Belgrade follows their adventures in the Balkans, as they struggle to stay alive.

Lebanese novelist and journalist Rabee Jaber was born in Beirut in 1972. He has been editor of Afaq, the weekly cultural supplement of Al-Hayat newspaper, since 2001. His first novel, Master of Darkness, won the Critics’ Choice Prize in 1992. He has since written 16 novels, including Black Tea, The Last House, Yousif Al-Inglizi, The Journey of the Granadan (published in German in 2005), Berytus: A City Beneath the Earth (published in French by Gallimard in 2009) and America, which was shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2010.

And from the press release:

As well as winning 50,000 US Dollars, Rabee Jaber is guaranteed an English translation of his novel, as well as increased book sales and international recognition. In the past five years, all winners of the Prize have secured English publishing deals for their novels, with three former winners—Youssef Ziedan, Abdo Khal and Mohammed Achaari—to be published in English in 2012.

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